You Can't Get Volunteers at the Supermarket
As the director of NeighborLink Fort Wayne, which is a volunteer mobilization organization that helps between 2000 - 3000 volunteers each year find a meaningful experience helping neighbors in need, I get a lot of praise for what gets accomplished. I do my best to point that praise towards all the volunteers because they're really responsible for our success, not me. Sure, I work hard to create the structure, manage the process, and resource the activity, but I'll touch 15 of the nearly 800 projects we'll do this year. We've got a really great decentralized thing going here and it's beautiful to watch take place. Grassroots volunteerism is alive, well, and in my opinion, the solution to our communities problems at the ground level.
With these praises from other organizations comes many requests wondering if we have volunteers that can help them do their tasks no one else wants or has time to do. They see what we can do with volunteers and wonder if we can share since they feel they could use more capacity. Volunteer hours are a precious commodity for nonprofits and we need everyone to give a bit of time to improve any one of the 1000 community improvement efforts going on each year locally. We all have a part to play. Organization leaders have a responsibility to activate volunteers to help us and to help their neighbors.
Lately, these requests are causing me to feel like NeighborLink is looked at like a volunteer supermarket. "Hey, call NeighborLink, they seem to have lots of volunteers, maybe they'll give you some." If I go deeper with that, it seems like we're talking about volunteers like they're commodities waiting to be invested or consumed however we choose, NeighborLink included. There are times when I think I can simply promote a specific project and expect to have 10 people show up to do what I want just like that. We are always happy to share how our model works and consider these requests for help just like we do homeowners. These requests cause me to consider my own requests and consider that maybe we're all thinking about this completely wrong.
NeighborLink doesn't own volunteers and we surely can't tell people what to do. I can't pull 10 people off the shelf and tell them to show up at your event or to paint your offices next Saturday and easier than I can tell 10 people show up and clean out the house of a homeowner that has hoarding issues. We rarely ever intend our requests like that, but it's something we all need to be more mindful of. Volunteers are not lining up at the door for any of us unless we have ongoing, very short-term, transactional nature to our volunteer needs and we've built our capacity and process accordingly. Think food bank processing. There are few organizations like this and the rest of us have to think differently.
Volunteers are people and we'll only share our time, treasure, and talent if we feel like we have excess to give or are inspired and challenged to activate our lives on behalf of others. Organization and volunteer coordinators need to flip the switch and consider what they can do for the volunteers rather than what the volunteers can do for them. If we want engaged volunteers, we have to learn what motivates them.
To an extent this is why NeighborLink has been so successful. We've built a structure that allows people motivated by their faith, or those needing to figure out what that deep, unsettled feeling deep in their soul is connected to find others that can help. Helping others is connected to our own personal, spiritual, or professional development process and to be mindful of this is critical. We recognize that this process is different for each of us and maybe the best way we can help is to get out of the way and to let that personal process drive our volunteers decisions throughout the entire process. We then "help" as much or as little as that volunteer wants during the process. Our investment in the lives of a few dozen leaders results in their mobilization of their communities to do projects.
Any organization using volunteers should consider themselves as a facilitator of transformation rather than a manager of transactions. You'll get more out of your volunteers if you invest in them rather than use them to accomplish your goals. In investing in them, your goals will be met as they catch the vision. Focus on relationships and not projects. Consider eliminating the barriers between volunteers and the needs you're trying to meet. Give them challenges rather than making it simple for them. Activate their skills or point them towards a new opportunity somewhere else if you can't use them.
There is no supermarket of volunteers and if anyone ever tries to create a one-stop shop where you can get any volunteer you want if you just ask or incentivize them enough, I might just give up. We don't need to consumerize the volunteer process as much as we need to learn what motivates individuals as consumers of experiences.
